


Harry Potter and the Side Problems

by Wyste



Series: The Problem Universe [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: Adoption, For Science!, Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-11-13 06:13:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11178762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wyste/pseuds/Wyste
Summary: This work will be a collection of short pieces of fiction canonical toHarry Potter and the Problem of Potionsthat didn't fit within the context of the fic. They probably won't make all that much sense without reading the overarching fic. (Prompts are accepted!)





	1. In Which a Graduate Student Juggles Frantically

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry is eight, Dudley is a bully, and Harry decides to take the daily game of Harry Hunting through a building near the park.

A tiny figure, blurry with speed, raced through the open door of the chemistry lab and slammed it behind him. The child looked around with all the wary precision of a rabbit looking for the hawk, and froze, staring.

The graduate student stared back, at the terrible grey too-big clothes, the huge glasses held together with tape, the lightning-bolt scar peeking out behind messy black hair.

“Hello,” he said to the boy, mouth dry. “What’s your name?”

“Harry,” the boy said, adjusting his huge glasses and peering cautiously upwards.

“What can I do for you, Harry?”

A sound in the corridor made the boy freeze.

“Right,” Albus said, jerked into motion. “Come on, hide under my desk and I’ll tell them to shove off, shall I?”

And with a firm hand on Harry’s arm, he did just that. Harry was hidden, and the rampaging rhinoceroses that were Dudley Dursley and his gang were told to get out of the building, this is a place of work.

After the lumbering herd had retreated, he ushered Harry gently out again.

“So, what was that about?”

Harry stared at him, mute and considering.

He couldn’t stand seeing the kid unhappy, okay? That was why he did it, in the end.

“Want to see me turn paper different colors by pouring stuff on it?” he said abruptly, adjusting things on his lab bench. “If you’re good, we’ll melt something.”

Harry’s grin was brilliant, and motivation enough for him to keep the kid entertained, juggling beakers and vials and making things smoke and ooze, even going so far as to explain his work trying to make better plastics for cars and roads and trains, when Harry seemed genuinely interested. 

Eventually, however, the sun had to set, and twilight drove the boy home to the Dursleys.

The harried time traveler ran his fingers through his tangled black hair as the door closed behind his father. All that effort to avoid screwing up his personal timeline, joining the muggle world, avoiding all contact with his future family, friends, and enemies, and _Harry Potter_ waltzes into his lab.

It probably wasn’t enough to mess with the timeline, right? It had just been one afternoon and he’d spent the whole time rambling on about acids and bases, the scientific method, and putting things in solution. Sure, his babbling might have been a little panicked, but the kid was like seven, there was no way he would be able to pick up on suppressed panic.

Everything, he told himself firmly, was fine. He’d request a transfer to a different campus, this traveling fellow lark was obviously a terrible idea. He’d get back home the slow way, right on schedule.

Everything was fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really debated whether to put this one in canonical or non-canonical ficlets, but in the end I decided that folks who don't like the idea can ignore it. The graduate student's secret identity doesn't change much about the main story, after all.
> 
> PS. Yes, I am writing again even though I finished a 180k story yesterday. At least there's a big difference between 3-4k a day and 500 words a day?


	2. In Which Minerva McGonagall Becomes a Godmother

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry is seventeen, very confused, and busy with the aftermath of the Battle of Hogwarts.

Her heart really wasn’t what it used to be. Winky had brought her tea and tucked a blanket over her legs and a shawl around her shoulders, and Minerva double checked the door to her office was closed before  summoning a bottle and pouring a stiff measure of good brandy into her steaming teacup before beginning to drink it.

Someone rapped three times on her door. Severus, of course. The man was sometimes so incredibly predictable.

“Come in,” she called, telling herself firmly that he had proven himself true, that she knew him, that it had all been a plot, and she definitely should not draw her wand on her old rival and ally.

He opened the door one-handed and stepped inside her office, turning to close the door behind him, other arm wrapped firmly around a bundle leaning on his shoulder.

What….

He turned back.

“Severus Snape, where did you steal a baby from.”

Oh, Merlin, she didn’t want to get up and track down whoever he’d stolen a baby from. She wanted to sit here and drink her tea and mourn the dead. Her heart really couldn’t take this.

“Such faith in me. May I sit?”

She waved him to the other armchair, and he sat and eyed the tea tray in some consternation, arms full of silver-haired infant. Impossible man.

Minerva flicked her wand at the tea set, which poured itself.

“If you recall, I had a favor to ask of you that I could not quite recollect,” he said slowly, shifting the sleeping form so it rested comfortably in his lap and he had a hand free for his teacup. “You said that as long as it was within your power, you would be happy to oblige me.”

She’d been distracted at the time by his suicidal plan to draw out Bellatrix LeStrange, and the obvious memory lapses. She’d been planning to enlist Harry Potter to stun him and deliver him to St Mungo’s spell damage ward, just as soon as that wouldn’t be a death sentence for the man.

“I do recall the conversation, yes,” Minerva said, and took another strengthening sip of her tea.

“This is my daughter, Minerva. Minerva, your namesake, Minerva McGonagall. I hope you will grow up to be as strong and upright a woman as she.” His gaze, softening as he looked down at the baby blinking sleepy blue eyes up at him, turned sly as he glanced up at Minerva. “Though I trust you not to grow up to join Gryffindor.”

“Is sharing a name the favor you want to ask of me, Severus?” she asked faintly. “Because I dinnae think I can stop you.”

“She needs a godmother.”

Minerva blinked at the man. He looked back, calm as a stone.

“Me?”

“Pray do not make me beg.”

Minerva held up a hand for quiet, and Severus obliged her by busying himself with the rousing baby and his tea. She finished her cup of tea. She poured herself another cup of tea. She poured a very large amount of brandy into her new cup of tea. She drank her tea.

“I suppose I’d best hold her, then,” she said after a while.

His grip on the little girl tightened, and baby Minerva demonstrated her displeasure quite audibly. This occupied some minutes. Minerva mentally dubbed the little girl Minny, just for ease of thought.

“If I’m to be her godmother, you’d best trust me to touch her.”

His lips thinned and he nodded sharply, but it still took the man a small age to unwind himself enough to turn the babe over. Minerva resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Professional paranoids raising children, lordie….

Minerva rocked the little girl gently.

“It’s a very great pleasure to meet you, Minny.” She looked up at Severus. “I don’t suppose you’ll be explaining any time soon?”

“I should rather not,” he said, hovering stiff-backed at the edge of his chair as if truly worried she was going to drop the bairne. Ridiculous.

“That’s alright. As long as she’s really yours, so I don’t have to get up and look for her mum and da. Battles used to be so much less tiring when I was a girl.”

“She is really mine.”

He smiled, eyes hooded, at Minny, and Minerva rang for another pot of tea.


	3. In Which Voldemort Talks About The Past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is the summer when Harry turns seventeen. Dumbledore is dead.

“Severus, you would think you had never held a baby before. Your hands like _this_ ,” and with impatient touch, Lord Voldemort rearranged his arms so that he cradled the tiny little thing properly. It never paid to forget a lesson the Dark Lord imparted, so Severus locked the memory tightly where it would not escape him. Your hands like this, gentle but firm, supporting the head.

He glanced up into impatient, hungry red eyes, and felt the brush of his lord’s mind against his.

“You have never held a baby before,” Lord Voldemort repeated. “However did you reach a respectable age without that particular accomplishment?”

“I don’t know, my lord,” Severus said softly, watching the baby. That seemed safer. “I did not have younger siblings. It never came up. I am surprised that you-“

“Severus.”

One gentle word, and he fell silent. He did not meet the Dark Lord’s eyes again, but he saw pale fingers clenched around his lord's wand, and knew he had come very close to something he should not have said.

“Thank you for correcting me, my lord,” he said, and would have knelt, but for a strong hand on his shoulder.

“Not while holding a _baby_ ,” the dark lord said, high voice amused once more. “Come. Sit. While you visit her, we may indulge in some informality.”

They sat in armchairs, and Severus continued looking at the babe in his arms.

“Will she always sleep so much?” he wondered aloud.

“Sadly, no. Soon will come further understanding of the world, and with it anger, pain, and heartbreak. And eventually she will learn to speak, and thus ask _questions_.”

Severus glanced up at his master, who was contemplating the fire.

“Dumbledore has, I think, shared with you some measure of his beliefs about my antecedents.”

“Yes, my lord. After the incident some years ago with the Chamber of Secrets.”

“You have not spoken of this.”

“No, my lord. I would never share any secret you did not wish me to.”

“Such a trustworthy servant,” Voldemort said, as if to a private joke. Severus, who knew the joke, smiled a little in acknowledgement of the point.

She was such a tiny thing. She would grow up strong, fierce, dark, beautiful, and powerful, but right now she was incredibly fragile. He could snap her neck right now, and only pay for it, eventually, with his own life.

He would not. That was not, he hoped, in his nature.

“When I was a child,” Voldemort said, seeming to address the fire, “They had us help with the younger children. I hated it.”

“Hate is a strong word, my lord.”

“It is the correct one. Needy, vile creatures.”

“I have ever found most children so, my lord.”

“They are not so bad once they are old enough to be corrected, but I still do not have a talent for it.”

“I am… not sure I do either, my lord.”

“Give her to me.”

Severus hesitated, and then realized he was hesitating. With a burst of anger at himself, he stood, and turned her back over to his lord.

“That is why I am certain you will have a talent for this. You are soft-hearted, Severus.”

“My lord,” he protested.

“Peace, my servant. It is useful to me. Be content.”

“Am I dismissed?”

“Yes. Look into my eyes, Severus.” Obediently, he met cool red eyes, as Voldemort said, “ _Confundo._ ”


End file.
